BERLIN – If Germany’s special parliamentary session on U.S. surveillance this week was any indication, European politicians are still worked up about former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks. Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that the revelations had “tested” U.S.-German relations. Green Party politician Hans-Christian Strobele urged the German leader to thank Snowden and offer him asylum for discovering that her cell phone “was probably bugged.” Merkel even got called a “scaredy-cat” for not standing up to Washington.

The criticism comes as politicians in the region—from Estonia to Germany—are calling for the European Union to create a cloud-computing infrastructure of its own to compete with American providers like Amazon, Google, and Verizon.

The idea is that if the EU has its own cloud—and what form it would take, who would build it, and where it would be based remain unclear—then member states could compel providers to abide by the EU’s (comparatively) stricter data-protection rules. It's part of a backlash against the long arm of the U.S. intelligence community that has echoes everywhere from Brazil to the United Nations.

One of the main proponents of a European cloud is EU Commission Vice President Viviane Reding, who was in Washington earlier this week to hammer out a treaty that would, if signed, assure that any EU citizens’ data stored in the United States be given the same privacy protections as U.S. citizens’ data (in the aftermath of the Snowden leaks, however, policymakers and privacy advocates in the U.S. are questioning the effectiveness of those protections).

Reding’s cloud formation plan essentially calls for EU nations to band together and create a European champion in cloud systems just as France, Germany, and Britain did in the 1960s, when they created aircraft manufacturer Airbus to compete with Boeing.

“For awhile now, I have been saying it’s time for the Europeans to build their own cloud,” Reding told a German radio station last week. “I think data protection needs to be thought of not as some extra cost, but something that makes us more competitive. When a company can guarantee that its customers’ data will remain secure, they will flock to you—it’s a golden business opportunity for European tech companies. It can become a sales argument.”

Indeed, part of the motivation here is a business one. European politicians want to see their companies exploit a gap in trust in U.S. companies as a result of the Snowden leaks. And two recent studies suggest that this is a sensible idea.

In one study of “industry practitioners and cloud-computing stakeholders” based outside the United States, the Cloud Security Alliance found that 56 percent of those polled would be less likely to work with U.S.-based cloud service providers due to data-protection fears. Another report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation suggested that the surveillance revelations could cost the U.S. cloud-computing industry $22 to $35 billion in lost revenues over the next three years.

European politicians want their companies to exploit a gap in trust in U.S. companies as a result of the Snowden leaks. And two studies suggest this is a sensible idea.

European providers have already been positioning themselves to become the router and storage solution of choice for companies in Africa, which has seen its share of traffic passing through the U.S. drop dramatically over the last 10 years. In 1999, some 70 percent of African Internet traffic went to the United States, according to a 2012 report by Analysis Mason. By 2011, the study noted, less than 5 percent of that traffic went to the U.S., “having been replaced by bandwidth to Europe.” It is unclear, however, what percentage of this data actually migrated away from American companies, many of which have built data centers in Europe to be closer to customers in the EU and Africa.

Not all Europeans share the outrage voiced by their political leaders over U.S. surveillance. A survey commissioned earlier this month by the magazine Wirtschaftswoche, for instance, found that 76 percent of Germans were not bothered by Snowden’s leaks. “Most people didn’t think that anything in their lives would be of interest to the American intelligence service,” the survey’s authors wrote. While the study didn’t ask whether Germans were concerned about charges that U.S. intelligence tapped into their chancellor’s phone, it did reveal that Germans are uneasy about their own officials: only 17 percent of those polled trusted the German government’s handling of their personal data.

Caught between public apathy and politicians’ anger, some German tech industry figures are calling for a middle path (others, like Deutsche Telekom’s CEO, have eagerly backed Reding’s cloud proposal). They like the data-protection treaty that Reding wants to sign with the U.S., but favor more stringent use of data encryption over rash plans to build EU clouds. The thinking is that stronger and more regular use of encryption could slow, to a degree, apparent U.S. attempts to comb through the world’s Internet traffic.

One German tech industry figure I spoke with felt it would be difficult, if not impossible, for Europeans to migrate completely away from U.S. services. He likened America’s hegemony on the Internet to the control Gulf States wield over oil resources.

“What you have with oil in the Middle East, you have in the U.S. with information,” said Malte Pollmann of Utimaco Safeware AG. “The U.S. is in a unique position of geopolitical strength in the information age—and there’s no other country like this.”

Pollmann suggested that U.S. and British intelligence services are exploiting gray zones in treaties between nations—and that European diplomats should, first and foremost, push for clarity on this issue.

“What we need right now is a debate,” Pollmann told me. “Two years from now, we will have a better idea of which tactics are clearly illegal, and which are legal, but not what we wanted. There will have to be a rebalance in terms of legal oversight. That’s why you have people like [Google's] Eric Schmidt saying ‘I don’t know’ if it is legal for the U.S. and British intelligence agencies to tap into Google’s cables.”

“What you have with oil in the Middle East, you have in the U.S. with information.”

The CEO of a leading German marketing consultancy described the mood among German executives like this: They’re bothered by the U.S. government’s intelligence-gathering overreach, but they don’t see the U.S. as Europe’s main threat the way some politicians might.

“It’s sad and stupid that Merkel’s phone was listened to,” said this CEO, who asked not to be named because he was critical of some of the countries in which he consults. “But I think most of the economic elites in Germany still see the U.S. as a strong ally. They don’t see economic espionage as the motive. Most economic elites here agree that the real danger and threat is in the emerging powers, like China.”

This CEO said his business stores most of its data on clouds in the United States, and that he wasn’t concerned about the situation because everything the company does is encrypted.

“We are using fully encrypted hard disks,” he noted. “As for phone communication—it just hasn’t been a topic for us. Many times what we are saying on the phone really isn’t too sensitive. And, if it is sensitive—construction plans or stock market-related transactions—we just don’t talk about it on the phone.”

Pollmann also echoed this sentiment.

“In the end,” he noted, “It’s cheaper to fly someplace and have a conversation in a room than to build elaborate systems for super-secret conversations.”

Most Popular

Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

You’ve likely seen the video before: a stream of kids, confronted with a single, alluring marshmallow. If they can resist eating it for 15 minutes, they’ll get two. Some do. Others cave almost immediately.

This “Marshmallow Test,” first conducted in the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the ongoing war between impulsivity and self-control. The kids have to tamp down their immediate desires and focus on long-term goals—an ability that correlates with their later health, wealth, and academic success, and that is supposedly controlled by the front part of the brain. But a new study by Alexander Soutschek at the University of Zurich suggests that self-control is also influenced by another brain region—and one that casts this ability in a different light.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

Modern slot machines develop an unbreakable hold on many players—some of whom wind up losing their jobs, their families, and even, as in the case of Scott Stevens, their lives.

On the morning of Monday, August 13, 2012, Scott Stevens loaded a brown hunting bag into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, then went to the master bedroom, where he hugged Stacy, his wife of 23 years. “I love you,” he told her.

Stacy thought that her husband was off to a job interview followed by an appointment with his therapist. Instead, he drove the 22 miles from their home in Steubenville, Ohio, to the Mountaineer Casino, just outside New Cumberland, West Virginia. He used the casino ATM to check his bank-account balance: $13,400. He walked across the casino floor to his favorite slot machine in the high-limit area: Triple Stars, a three-reel game that cost $10 a spin. Maybe this time it would pay out enough to save him.

A report will be shared with lawmakers before Trump’s inauguration, a top advisor said Friday.

Updated at 2:20 p.m.

President Obama asked intelligence officials to perform a “full review” of election-related hacking this week, and plans will share a report of its findings with lawmakers before he leaves office on January 20, 2017.

Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Friday that the investigation will reach all the way back to 2008, and will examine patterns of “malicious cyber-activity timed to election cycles.” He emphasized that the White House is not questioning the results of the November election.

Asked whether a sweeping investigation could be completed in the time left in Obama’s final term—just six weeks—Schultz replied that intelligence agencies will work quickly, because the preparing the report is “a major priority for the president of the United States.”

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.